Yandex Launches Project to Provide Big Data Solutions to Businesses

Yandex (Nasdaq:YNDX), one of the largest European internet companies and the leading search provider in Russia, today announced it is embarking on a new B2B venture developing custom-made big data solutions for businesses – Yandex Data Factory.

Yandex Data Factory, an international project with offices in Moscow and Amsterdam, will provide services to companies both in Russia and worldwide. It enables businesses working with large volumes of data to use Yandex's technologies – machine learning, image and voice recognition, deep neural networks, and natural voice processing – to make sense of their accumulated mass of data and solve their business tasks.

Yandex Data Factory uses algorithms that Yandex developed for its own needs: search, traffic forecasting, ad targeting, music recommendations. But it's not the 'content' of data that these algorithms analyse – rather, they analyse data interrelations – and so they can be applied in any industry: from banking to telecommunications, from logistics to oil and gas extraction, from public utility services to aircraft engineering.

Sensor readings, audio or video recordings, information about orders and transactions are just a few examples of the kinds of data that businesses may leverage using Yandex Data Factory's services for various aims, ranging from targeting potential customers to setting business goals or optimising business processes.

"Using machine learning to analyse 'big data' is a very promising new sphere," said the head of Yandex Data Factory, Jane Zavalishina. "Yandex Data Factory uses algorithms that Yandex developed for its own needs: search, traffic forecasting, ad targeting, music recommendations. But it's not the 'content' of data that these algorithms analyse – rather, they analyse data interrelations – and so they can be applied in any industry: from banking to telecommunications, from logistics to oil and gas extraction, from public utility services to aircraft engineering."

Yandex has already completed a few pilot projects with partner companies and received its first results. For a road and transportation management agency, for instance, Yandex Data Factory processed data about traffic congestion, road surface quality, average traffic speed and number of accidents, to enable real-time forecasting of traffic jams and accident probability in certain road segments in the following hour. For a leading bank, Yandex Data Factory analyzed information about clients and their actions – which enabled the bank to develop personalized offers and boost sales of banking products.

Besides the technologies for processing large volumes of information, Yandex has a team that includes the leading experts in this field. It also has its own methodology and infrastructure to train such specialists. In 2007, it opened the Yandex School of Data Analysis for graduate and postgraduate students in computer science and data analysis. And in 2014, Yandex teamed up with Moscow's Higher School of Economics to open its own Faculty of Computer Science, including the Department of Big Data and Information Retrieval.